Facebook’s Instagram Research Isn’t Anything Like Science

As Facebook weathers yet another scandal, this time fueled by its internal research on the effects of Instagram, I’d like to focus on something slightly different that should be a scandal, too: the quality of that internal research.

Facebook has been pushing back against a story in the Wall Street Journal, which cited a leaked internal report suggesting that Instagram harms teenagers by fostering insecurities around “social comparison” and sometimes even suicidal thoughts. In its public-facing blog, the company featured an article titled “What Our Research Really Says About Teen Well-Being and Instagram.” It pointed out ways in which the app was found to be benign or mildly positive, and also sought to downplay the significance of the research, noting that it “did not measure causal relationships between Instagram and real-world issues,” and sometimes “relied on input from only 40 teens.”